The fire this Saturday in an interior home on Gasómetro Street, between 4th and 6th Streets, in the Mariana de la Torre neighborhood, Vista Hermosa, Santiago de Cuba was extinguished, according to real-time reports from independent journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada from the scene.
According to local residents, the cause was a pressure cooker on the fire while they were cooking with firewood. The house, made of precarious construction with several wooden structures, allowed the flames to spread quickly, generating a column of black smoke visible from various points in the city.
What alarmed the neighbors the most was not just the fire, but the delay in the response from the Fire Department. According to testimonies from residents, they called several times before receiving a response, while trying to contain the incident on their own.
"The firefighters weren't answering the phone, everyone was calling, I'm here right now; if the fire isn't put out quickly, it will spread to the backyards of the houses on the steps," warned a resident who claimed to be on the scene.
The firefighters finally arrived and extinguished the fire. There were no casualties or injuries. At the time of reporting, members of the Fire Brigade and agents of the National Revolutionary Police were still on the scene assessing the damage.
The incident is not isolated. Santiago de Cuba has experienced at least six significant fires between February and April 2026: in February, a large-scale fire affected building B-53 in the José Martí District due to waste burning; in April, another fire destroyed the home of two families on Gallo Street 110, leaving five children homeless; and a third fire forced the evacuation of 12 patients from the Saturnino Lora Hospital following a failure in an air conditioning compressor.
The crisis of the fire service is a structural problem documented throughout the island. In Guantánamo, on April 11, firefighters responded to a fire that destroyed at least three homes but ran out of water to fight the blaze. In Havana, residents have resorted to deliberately setting fire to trash bins to attract firefighters and obtain water from their tanker trucks.
The structural context exacerbates the situation. The national electricity deficit —which reached between 1,630 and 1,945 MW in April, with blackouts affecting more than 55% of the territory— forces families to cook with firewood or charcoal, increasing the risk of household fires. Additionally, five months after Hurricane Melissa, which damaged over 106,500 homes in the province as a category 3 in October 2025, only 17% had been repaired, leaving thousands of families in precarious structures highly vulnerable to fire.
Journalist Mayeta Labrada summed up the reality with a succinct phrase at the end of her report: "The fire spoke for itself."
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